This invention relates to a heat energy conservation device for use with heating equipment, wherein the heater is ON and doing its heating and then again is OFF because it has done its work. In either case heat loss occurs and it is the minimizing of this heat loss that the invention is directed to. The term heater used herein includes furnaces, hot water boilers, not water tanks and heating apparatus of various types using gas, oil and other fuels requiring connection to a chimney.
More particularly the present invention relates to a choke in the form of an inverted U, V, or L shape combined with the flue of the heater to form a fluid trap. This trap employed between the flue of the heater and the chimney, chokes off hot air from its heat interchange surfaces while in an OFF or non-heating mode to eliminate this large loss of heat energy. Heaters such as these by their very nature and design are both heat absorbers as well as heat exchangers. Their nature does not change when they are changed from an OFF mode where their burner is OFF to an ON mode where their burner is ON or vice versa. They still act as heat exchangers and thereby promptly lose the heat they had gained to return to the ambient temperature of their environment.
One problem with the present flue connections used, which in many cases are mandatory by local laws, is the inclusion of a draft deflector or diverter usually placed at the top of the heater and then piped to the chimney. By virtue of its location, at the top of the heater, it is constantly taking away heated air lost from heating areas of the heater and also warm room air and delivering it to the chimney and out of the living space, a complete loss and waste of this heat energy. Also by being located at the top of the heater it is drawing room air from a stratum of, warmer than average room air.
The present invention uses the principle of a deflector or so called draft diverter, to take advantage of its usefulness and compliance to the safety laws but places it lower and to the side of the heater where it takes air from a lower stratum and a lower temperature, to reduce the thermal loss when evacuating room air. Of greater importance is the fact that the present invention further chokes off the lost hot air of the appliance to slow down the reverse heat transfer of its heating surfaces when the burner is OFF but yet does not impede the flow of hot combustion gasses through to the chimney when the burner is ON. The choking off of hot gasses also gradually lowers the chimney temperature and this then in turn lowers its motivation to draw as strongly as when hotter.
A principal object of this invention is to provide an attachment which allows free flow of hot gasses from a heater to a chimney when the heater is ON and which chokes off the flow of hot gasses when the heater is OFF to retain residual heat energy.
Another main object is to utilize all of the interior space in the overall displacement of the device to accomplish the maximum choke effect by stratification of the hot gasses.
A further object is to obtain that just mentioned object with the minimum amount of material in its make up.
Another object is to provide a choke without moving parts, which works by the natural law of gravity and changes its mode of ON or OFF by its confrontation with temperature and pressure of the flue gasses.
A still further object is to use the invention as a heat exchange device as well as a trap when in the ON mode to retain additional energy for the user.
Another object is to provide a choke chamber having a pan part formed from a folded single sheet of material.
One other object is to provide a choke chamber having a top plate with depending side walls and a base plate with upstanding side walls, each complimenting the other to form the closed choke chamber.